


There Are Still Bad Men Out There

by sindarintrash



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Dark, Captain America AU, I don't know what I was doing, It's an outline for something I want to write in the future, everyone is very ooc, literally what the fuck is this, no one's names are mentioned at all ever, stucky au, this whole thing is an au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-18
Updated: 2016-05-18
Packaged: 2018-06-09 06:40:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6894169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sindarintrash/pseuds/sindarintrash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I was angry and wrote an outline for an au. Here it is. Very ooc basically-a-villain!Cap ahead. What the fucky, Bucky.</p>
            </blockquote>





	There Are Still Bad Men Out There

**Author's Note:**

> I'd like to apologize upfront for how genuinely shitty this is. I'll have you know that its a pretty rough outline-ish thing for the story I'm currently writing, "Constant", in which I added to the plot a bit and changed some things. (Right now I'm working on that, and I'll start posting it sometime once I've written and edited at least the first three chapters or so. It can also be found on my wattpad, buckysthighs.)

It started when we were younger.

He had always been small. Weak. People pushed him around and he tried his hardest to push back, but it wasn’t hard enough. When we were twelve he was frustrated- itching to get in a fight where maybe he would win. He wanted to push back and make the person stumble. We were fourteen when he decided it wasn’t worth it, that pushing was pushing no matter what the cause and he wouldn’t have any of it. He took the shoves. He was resilient and strong and I don’t know how many times the world seemed to stop when I was running to his side because he just stood there and I couldn’t believe how long he would hold his ground. We were fourteen when I learned he would hold it forever. He’d hold it until his unconscious body was lying with the garbage on the pavement in an alleyway and then he’d pass the duty onto me.

When we were sixteen he enlisted. He said he stood through enough and that he should at least be standing for something. I told him that he’d never liked the government- or the army- and he said that he didn’t care. I told him he stood for himself. He asked me if that wasn’t good enough, he asked me as if I was accusing him of doing something wrong. They could make him stronger, strong enough to be what the country, the people, needed. He was convinced of that. I tried to tell him he was already strong. He just said he “had to do this” and was gone in the morning.  
He was eighteen when I next saw his name, it flashed on the headlines of discarded newspapers. I didn’t care about the war after he left, it didn’t matter to me much because they were supposed to protect America, but there was nothing left here I saw worth protecting. For the first time since I’d been prompted by him, I finally decided to pick one up. “Super Soldier” they read. “The Hero America Needs.”　

I didn’t see him again until months after. It was a big deal, he’d insisted he bring me along to some ceremony in his honor, instead of one of those girls from the base they insisted he call a “date.” He said I was more important to him than some stranger in a skirt who was shoved onto his arm and wouldn’t let go. I told him it was an honor, and that night I ironed my best shirt for the first time in two years. I remembered because he wore it sometimes too, and by the time he moved out I was worried that I’d stretched it too much to fit his small frame. I’d never seen the poor bastard in such an expensive suit. He smiled and nodded and posed for pictures, and spoke like he knew he deserved to be heard. He gave off a confident air that I didn’t recognize as his at all. He looked nice. He looked different.  
When he was nineteen it was over. Everyone went home, and half the people who didn’t claim some sort of well-known title for their victories retired. He was put in charge. My friend, and apparently now “my hero” who I owed my very current existence to, was put in charge of an army of dangerous men. I wouldn’t have done it, I told them that. The government didn’t care. The government did it anyway.

I was twenty-one and I’d never been more stable day in and day out. I had slowly crawled on from his sudden exit from my life. The night after the ceremony I’d asked him to stay. He’d already become the country’s hero. He said there were still bad men out there. He said it wasn’t enough.

I worried that it’d never be enough.

I’d snagged a job with the local newspaper. The first thing they asked was if I’d been the supersoldier’s date at that god damned ceremony, they said a face like mine was recognizable. I couldn’t tell if they were hitting on me or insulting me so I told them to go fuck themselves and once I got a few good articles in and was going steady, I told the head of the company I wouldn’t write about the war. Or the Army. Or “The Hero that America Needs.”  
It was barely a month later when chatter started rising from the main office. “He’s gone insane,” and “We’ll be enemies with half the world at this rate,” and “Not every bad person has to be taken down by force” were the main ones. It took some time for it to register. Our tax dollars were going to my idiot friend, who was fueling his ego and our quicker demise. I couldn’t contact him. The one time I did he spat out some memorized speech about “Fighting for America” and hung up. He claimed he didn’t remember my name.

I was almost twenty-three when they started drafting us. I barely remembered how old he was, with all the power and authority and morally-questionable plans he had. I was riding as cargo with a truckload of fresh soldiers when his voice was shoved, tinny and scratchy and barely recognizable, through the loudspeaker. I remember looking out the back, watching dust crush and blow out into harsh tire tracks, through the canvas flap that fluttered when he hit rocks and divits in the rural terrain. His voice was lower, but mine probably was too. I wondered what he looked like. I tried my hardest not to wonder how he was, or how the war had changed him and what he was like now.

We fought so many wars that it was a blur. Front after front after front rolled through and it felt like I was being dragged along a line of different boxes, like sets for stage plays, with a different gun stuck in my hands each day or week or year that was somehow passing. I didn’t see it, even though my eyes were constantly open. Suddenly he was gaining control in the white house. Suddenly the only phrase I heard in French was “avide de pouvoir” since everyone kept using it in the same sentence as his name. Suddenly I just wanted him and our old apartment in Brooklyn, and realized that the old cat whose visits I always thought to be a bother would probably be the only attainable thing to comfort me. He wasn’t attainable. The apartment had probably been sacrificed to the elements by now.

The only thing that got me through was remembering that there were still bad men out there. That and trying my hardest not to remember that he was the one who said it.

“There are still bad men out there”, a voice through the speaker screamed to the crowd. I didn’t turn to face the television. I knew it was him. I knew he was running for re-election, against no other opponents, in at least seven countries who all happily agreed to unite under his rule. I cringed. That was our private mantra. At least I thought it was. Maybe all of his private past was just his future propaganda. I missed and resented him. I wondered what I would do if I had to face him again. I wondered if I’d shoot him out of anger or shoot him out of habit. I wondered if I’d just cry.

He stood at the head of an empire until his death. I thought it ironic. He had always been small. Weak. People pushed him around and he tried his hardest to push back, this time it was hard enough. It was too hard. He hit back and he damaged the world. The thing is, you’ll never convince a victim they’re anything but. He thought that his four years of taking punches gave him the right to screw this up for everyone else. 

I worried before that he’d never have enough. He’d never get over how satisfying it feels to make your bully bleed. He didn’t. He loved to watch his enemies die, so he made sure he never ran out of enemies.


End file.
